"Oh, that smells so good!" Donovan drew in a slow, deep breath as he and the others filed into the mess hall. When Zadra had paused the training session for lunch, they'd all headed here together.

Grishnag inhaled the aroma of spaghetti and meatballs, pork fried rice, and burritos coming from the table occupied by Ralissa and Lorkis, and chuckled.

Interesting combination. Looks like they're sampling a variety of human cuisine. She'd done the same thing herself, way back when her tribe had been relocated to Earth, eager to try new things and find out what she liked. But more than anything, she'd been overjoyed just to have steady meals for the first time in her life.

"How was the training session?" Ralissa smiled as she stood, picked up her now-empty tray, and carried it to the compact dishwasher in the corner.

"Exhausting." Donovan plopped into the nearest chair and sighed. "Not from exertion or anything. It was just really tense. I didn't make a complete fool of myself, though, so it could've been worse."

"Oh, you did just fine." Kolya nudged his shoulder, laughed softly, and pointed at the food dispenser. "What're you having for lunch?"

"Think I'll try the deluxe omelet."

"Comin' right up." She found his requested item on the menu and returned with it and a plate of fried chicken, mixed vegetables, mashed potatoes, and gravy for herself. She glanced at Syala, then over to Ralissa and Zadra, as she sat. "I'm curious about something. Are the mulathi and shonari, like, ‘cousin' species? Offshoots of an older species? Or is one an offshoot of the other? The similarities …"

"Their civilization is far older than ours." Ralissa smiled. "A common hypothesis is that we arose from a long-lost mulathi colony set up when they were first beginning to venture out into space. There are a few flaws in it. Even though we both have hooves and horns and glowing eyes, we're not genetically compatible. I'm not an expert in biology, but I'd think speciation would take more than thirteen thousand years."

"Besides which," Zadra added, "the shonari homeworld is too far from the mulathi homeworld for their earliest colony ships to have settled."

"Unless one of them passed through a space-time rift like we did," Zilaka said.

Ralissa and Zadra stared at her before turning to gape at each other. Grishnag tried to hold in a laugh.

"Holy shit," Zadra finally muttered. "It's … it never occurred to me to check the records of the mulathi's first space missions for ships that turned up missing. It could actually be possible."

"Whoa." Kolya aimed a brilliant grin at Zilaka. "Mind. Blown."

"Yeah." Lorkis slithered over from the food dispenser, coiled up at the end of the table, and jotted a note into his comm. "I'll have to find out if any research into that has already been done."

"None that I'm aware of, so it's worth a try," Ralissa said with a smile.

"Hmm. That makes me wonder about something." Zilaka motioned at her face. "I bear a slight resemblance to two different animal species on Earth. Perhaps some of them found their way through those rifts, if any ever appeared there thousands or millions of years ago, and gradually merged into one species? I have no idea if such a thing is possible, but if it could've happened, they might be my distant ancestors."

"Whoa." Dylan's lips parted slightly. "I noticed the resemblance when we met, but it didn't occur to me that there might be an actual connection."

"Interesting." Lorkis cocked his head. "You might ask a biologist about it sometime. Could make for a fascinating research project."

"My curiosity's definitely aroused." Grishnag headed over to the dispenser, selected an extra-large crab salad, and sat at the adjacent table. The others joined her over the next few moments.

"Speaking of aliens and whatnot," Kolya said, "what do you think is on the planet the Vancouver is orbiting? Ruins were mentioned in the briefing, so I'm having a little trouble keeping my imagination from running wild."

"That's understandable," Lorkis said. "I've never had a chance to visit a world where no one has lived for thousands of years, but I imagine it must be a unique thrill."

Kolya nodded. "I haven't been to any alien ruins yet, but I visited Stonehenge before I left Earth, and there was a palpable feeling in the air." She grinned and shivered slightly. "I swear I could feel the history of the place, centuries upon centuries of time just sort of hanging in the air. It's one of the reasons I wanted to see other planets."

"You should visit the mulathi homeworld, Izanakha, sometime." Zadra twisted the cap off a bottle of water. "The recorded history of their civilization dates back well over twenty thousand years, and they've only been spacefaring for over half of that time. They've still got many historical sites that have been preserved as they were millennia ago, and visiting them is quite an experience. Just standing there and taking it all in made me feel insignificant."

"I can imagine. I'll have to add that to my bucket list. Where's it located, by the way?"

"It's in the Zeta Orionis system, seven hundred thirty-six light years from Earth," Syala said. "Its sun is also called Alnitak." She grinned and twitched one shoulder in a sort of half-shrug. "Once I became fluent in English and learned how to use computers, one of the first things I did was to research the development of my species. Finding out how far they've come was amazing. It was also fascinating how they seem to have become kind of rigid and militaristic over the last few hundred years, when the culture I grew up in was much more carefree. What's even better is that they seem to be loosening up a bit."

Grish winked at her. "You can probably blame the zorai for that."

"Whatever the cause, I'm thankful for the change. They've become too serious for my taste." She chuckled. "It's nice to see them starting to embrace their sexuality again, not to mention learning how to laugh and have fun."

"I'm all for people having fun." Dylan flashed a brilliant grin at her. "And having sex. Especially the ones I'm married to."

Syala laughed. "Well, I know where to find dessert, then."

Donovan leaned over to whisper something to Kolya. Her eyes opened wide and she beamed at him while tugging on her collar. She began eating faster as if trying to finish quickly and move on to something else before lunch ended and everyone had to get back to EVA training.

"So," Zilaka said a moment later, "about the ruins on Gamma Orionis b?"

"Oh, right." Ralissa nodded. "We've only explored a few of the structures scattered around the planet. From what we've seen, it doesn't appear to be the remains of an entire civilization, but more like a network of outposts. The structures are similar in shape but vary in size. They could have been research stations set up to study the local plant and animal life, possibly to figure out how complex life developed on a planet that's so young."

"Another possibility," Zadra added, "is that whoever the inhabitants were, they were just beginning to set up a colony when most of the life on the planet was wiped out. Which brings up other questions such as, did they accidentally kill themselves and everything around them, or did someone do it deliberately?"

"There's an unsettling thought," Donovan muttered.

"Very." Ralissa shrugged. "It's possible that it was caused by a natural disaster. No evidence of ultraviolet radiation or anything similar damaging the bottom of the food chain, for instance, but there are too many other possibilities. Perhaps the newly developing ecosystem was just too fragile and a disease or a forest fire sparked off by lightning caused irreversible damage."

"We haven't been able to translate any of the text we found, so we're in the dark as far as whatever records of the event were left behind," Zadra said. "All we can do is speculate until someone figures that out."

"Once we prevent the Vancouver from deorbiting, we'll land and take a look at one of the structures no one has explored yet." Ralissa grinned and glanced around at everyone. "Who knows, we might find something there that'll give us some solid answers."

"That would be awesome." Kolya rubbed her hands together. "That's why I'm here, after all."